Now this is getting fucking ridiculous. It’s like Bristol’s got its very own multi-millionaire Merchant Venturer Forrest Gump character popping up every time something totally crap is announced in the city.
To be honest, the way things are run around here, it wouldn’t surprise us if you woke up tomorrow morning to find Business West boss John Savage‘s ugly mug creepily leering at you in your bed while a couple of his local government officer minions, assisted by a grand-a-day Atkins consultant, set up a laptop and delivered a snappy Powerpoint presentation on ‘the delivery phase of your regional household breakfast spatial strategy’.
Should you find yourself in this situation; for god’s sake take the day off work. Otherwise you’re likely to return home later to find Herr Savage and his quangocracy have blitzkrieged the house and concreted the garden in order to carve out some more Lebensraum for his ever-expanding state funded regional Businessreich.
Multimillionaire Savage’s latest unelected power grab, where he supposedly represents us, is on yet another local quango, the West of England Strategic Partnership (WESP) Board (pdf). Here he sits alongside the clueless (although at least elected) triumvirate of party leaders Bunter Eddy, Pudding Basin Comer and Helen Holland.
WESP is the quango that has decided – without consultation or discussion – to turn the Bath and Bristol Cycle Path into a rapid transit route although they also appear very determined to dump a congestion charge on us as well whether we want it or not.
Savage would just have to be involved really wouldn”t he? How could the man who failed to deliver us our Arena not be up for the wanton destruction of one of the city’s most outstanding and popular remaining features? And who else but an unelected multi-millionaire could possibly be at the forefront of moves to create a very special new regressive transport tax that will shaft the poorest in the city a little bit more?
The Blogger says enough’s enough. Savage: go get yerself elected or go get yerself out of Bristol’s public life right now you destructive, self-serving little scrote.
Hear hear.
I’ve met Savage and he’s a smug twat.
He hasn’t stood for office, so why’s he making decisions on my behalf?
And you just know that if they ever decide on an elected mayor for Bristol that this self appointed over privileged tosser will front the running. Let’s not be naive about this, just because we
get to cast a vote every four years don’t let’s kid ourselves that our so called democracy is anything other than a fucking sham. Savage and his ilk just reinforce the knowledge that it’s the invisible power that sets the agenda – the mostly faceless, always unaccountable bastards. Merchant Venturers, SWRDA, Regional Assembly, countless quangos, the spineless or biased media (and as you’ve pointed out BB, it’s all the same people). And I’m not even a conspiracy theorist.
If there’s one thing I hate more than the tossers in the Count’s Louse, it’s the bloody quangocrats. At least people have a chance to throw our so called elected representatives out every few years, we’re stuck with the quangocrats however. These buggers are an affront to any pretence of democratic government.
I’d heard that a representative from First Bus having a say on the project board deciding a possible fate of the cycle path which seems a little strange considering they have a vested interest in the path becoming a rapid transport route.